Neighborhood Public Radio Hits the Road

After several successful runs in San Francisco Neighborhood Public Radio now plans to play out. Way out: the station will broadcast from Version in Chicago later this month. This is apparently the start of a “process of realizing the dream we have always had of bringing NPR to cities all over the world.” NPR’s latest thematic run involved indecency and ran through most of February. Interestingly, they are not the only traveling microstation in circulation at the moment.

Scene Reports: Colorado, California, Tennessee

Colorado: Denver Free Radio was busted this morning after a scant three days on the air. That’s a pretty quick turnaround for the FCC, although it certainly helps that there’s a field office right in town so they didn’t have to go very far to pay the station a visit.
The agents reportedly arrived in “a green SUV with a big white dome on it” and observers also noticed other trucks in the area bristling with antennas; it’s not clear whether this was legitimate backup or local broadcast engineers/amateur radio ops out for a joyride.
Apparently Denver Free Radio operates on a model similar to Boulder Free Radio (KBFR) in that it is “locationally-flexible” – this means there’s a decent chance of the station making a return. The FCC folks did ask those hosting DFR’s gear to willingly give it up; that request was (fortunately) denied. As a result FCC agents have reportedly staked out the transmitter location, ostensibly in an an attempt to pin a person down to the operation who can be punished. Continue reading “Scene Reports: Colorado, California, Tennessee”